Quaint Rooney's Cafe Serves Up Seasonal Classics

Keith Power

Published 4:00 am, Friday, September 4, 1998

1998-09-04 04:00:00 PDT TIBURON -- In a town where restaurants offer spectacular views of the San Francisco Bay, Rooney's Cafe & Grill in Tiburon is on the other side of Main Street, across from the flagship restaurants lining the waterfront. Most tourists tend to peer over the half-curtains of Rooney's front windows and -- failing to see blue sparkling water -- continue their promenade along the cute false fronts until they find a table, usually with seagulls swooping overhead.

John Rooney and his partner, chef David Hinman, don't mind. The menu has been a compelling attraction for local diners for more than 25 years. Those tourists who venture through the Dutch door find creative, evolving cuisine beautifully in tune with the seasons.

The quaint cafe has a surviving tongue-in-groove ceiling, Craftsman-style dark wooden posts and trim, and a bit of a list to starboard. It served Tiburon in various commercial guises when the town was a railroad yard and train-ferry terminus -- a blue-collar period hard to envision in today's gussied environment. As Rooney's Cafe, the historic old place seats 45 on the solid wooden floor of the main room.

The cafe's garden is a rustic, open-air area at the rear that can seat 18 diners surrounded by blooming flowers in pots and planters and topiary loquat trees.

FINE SALADS

One lunch consisted of two remarkably different styles of salad drawn from the same specials menu. The hot prawn salad ($10.95) came with an edgy lemon-caper vinaigrette; the prawns were plump and sizzling on chilled greens. The visual effect also was hot: The dish combined mango, orange, papaya, melon and sweet red pepper. A scattering of fresh blueberries added a cooling touch. It was masterful.

Less exotic but no less satisfying was the pear salad ($7.95). The slices of Comice pears were ripe to perfection, served on a healthy mix of greens and surrounded by sharp Belgian endive. A generous portion of crumbled English Stilton cheese crossed flavors with toasted pecans against a melodious background of balsamic vinaigrette.

Rooney's regular menu has a substantial offering of sandwiches, including deli meats layered lavishly enough to pass muster in New York.

More unusual was the open-face Mediterranean ($8.95). Melted fontina cheese and anchovy fillets topped a spread of diced tomato, basil and garlic on toasted sourdough. The sandwich's other toasted slices carried a relatively reserved display of grilled eggplant and kalamata olives under crumbled feta. Both halves made a greater, savory whole.

Rooney's cuisine also shines at night when the summer day-trippers board the outgoing ferry boats and the locals regain Main Street. The fragrant steamed mussels appetizer ($6.95) was produced with a flurry of ginger, saffron and garlic in a white wine sauce. It was a heady and succulent dish, although we felt the garlic was too intrusive.

ROBUST FLAVORS

The boneless rib-eye steak ($16.95) came from the kitchen grilled precisely to order. The chef at Rooney's doesn't shrink from strong flavors, and in this dish, Stilton cheese crumbled on the meat was a powerful -- some thought too powerful -- stroke. The garlic in the mashed potatoes was, again, a bit much.

The pork chop ($15.95), grilled with a peppery rub, was properly moist and accompanied with a fresh, ambrosial peach and mango chutney. The string beans were satisfyingly crunchy.

Rooney's also has a deft hand with pasta. The angel hair entree ($14.95) came with good portions of sea scallops, rock shrimp and salmon brought together in a well-balanced tomato-basil sauce.

We opted for summer fruit with dessert. The sweet black figs ($5.95) fanned out from a delicate scoop of mascarpone, the creamy Italian cheese more familiar as a torta layer. A raspberry puree added a satisfying gloss.

Rooney's wine selection is meager, falling short of the variety needed to match the restaurant's stylish cuisine. French tourists, as well as others, may be disappointed by the Chablis on the wine list. This is a bland California masquerade of the true, flinty white wine of the renowned Chablis region in France.

There is also little excuse for not indicating the vintage years of the bottles on hand. Over several visits, the most agreeable wine we tasted was the Benzinger Merlot ($27), which was soft and subtle and turned out to be from 1996.

The service was consistently slow at lunch and dinner. Beaming proprietor John Rooney welcomes patrons during the day, but the wait staff generally tends to be cheerless and not forthcoming.

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